Something you never want to think about
I still can’t believe how close we came to possibly losing our daughter. It hurts me to even write those words. The awful memories that Josh and I have of last Saturday night (well really Sunday morning) will stay with us forever.
Recently I had googled 2 month old vaccinations to see what we could expect at Lillian’s 2 month visit. When I started typing that in google, one of the top suggested searches was about 2 month vaccines and SIDS. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I clicked it to see what it was about. There were a lot of sites warning that certain vaccinations (like DTap) given at 2 months of age could be a factor in SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Josh and I read the stories from Think Twice’s Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Is There a Link?. Needless to say, neither of us had dry eyes and neither of us could help imagining ourselves in those horrible situations. I dare any parent of a newborn to read that and not become paranoid about SIDS and/or vaccines.
(So there is no confusion…Lillian didn’t get her 2 month vaccinations yet, so ironically it wasn’t caused by what we feared might cause this to happen. BUT, if we hadn’t been paranoid about the vaccinations possibly causing SIDS, we wouldn’t have looked more into SIDS and my mom wouldn’t have told me about this life saving device!! We had our worries for a very good reason.)
Finding out more about SIDS told us that babies 2 months and 4 months of age are at greatest risk. We knew Lillian was entering into the danger territory and it terrified us. My mom told us about baby breathing monitors that are used to try and prevent SIDS. I bought one from Amazon that same day. We decided on the Snuza Halo. It saved our baby’s life. This is what it looks like: (image from Amazon)
And here is what it looks like on a baby: (image from Amazon)
We had been using it for about 2 weeks with no incident. We were feeling pretty confident, and starting to think we were worrying for nothing. On Saturday night we went to bed like we usually do. We put Lillian down in her bassinet next to our bed. She awoke for her middle of the night feeding at around 3 am. I fed her and we went back to sleep. At around 6 am Josh and I were awakened by an alarm. It was the Snuza. I think Josh at first thought it was our house alarm. I jumped out of bed and started screaming “It’s her! It’s her!” We were frantic at that point, looking into the bassinet and realizing she wasn’t even stirring with all this noise. The Snuza has a feature where it vibrates if the baby hasn’t breathed for 15 seconds, then if the baby still doesn’t rouse and breathe, it has an alarm feature that goes off if the baby doesn’t breathe for 20 seconds. I still can’t believe this happened to Lillian.
Josh grabbed her up out of the bassinet thinking that would wake her up. It didn’t. He started jostling her in his arms. She wasn’t breathing, and she wasn’t moving. We were really panicking at this point, continually screaming “Lillian! Lilliaaaaan!” I’ll never get the echo of those horrible, hoarse cries of her name coming out of Josh and my mouths. It felt horribly like we were mourning her. We thought we might have been. Nothing can or will ever prepare you for such a thing. Josh started jostling her more and more frantically (he had her on the bed at this point and taken out of her swaddle wrap). Her eyes were open and not seeing anything. I could tell my daughter wasn’t there. She was still unresponsive. I’ll never get that horrible image out of my head. I felt so sick and so horrified and so like I’d left reality. It was gut-wrenching sickness, fear, sorrow, horror, and denial. This just couldn’t be real. It couldn’t really be happening.
I was so afraid, and panicking so much that I forgot how to use a phone. I tried so many times to dial 911 and just wasn’t successful. We found out later that the bottom half of our bedroom door was ripped off its hinges. I think in my panic at trying to reach 911 I tried to go out into the hallway, and must have accidentally done that to the door. Then our phone rang, and it was the county. They asked if I’d tried dialling 911 and I said yes and explained what was going on. They put me through to 911 and I started explaining again.
Miraculously, at that moment Lillian was gently brought back to us. Thank God!!! She was breathing, and you could see life in her eyes again. It was glorious! We were so relieved!! We couldn’t help but be scared still though, especially because she wasn’t seeming like herself. She didn’t startle awake like normal, she didn’t cry, and she just seemed like she was in a stupor. 911 said that they were still sending an ambulance to make sure everything was ok. We were shaking with fear and relief, and crying.
The sheriffs and ambulance arrived and they looked at her color, which was fine, and how she was acting. At that point she was back to pretty much normal! Her parents sure weren’t though! The EMTs said they would like her to go to the hospital still just to be sure. I rode with Lillian in the ambulance and Josh followed in our car. It all got to me again as I was riding in that ambulance with her. I couldn’t believe how close it had been to the UNTHINKABLE. The worst. We were so blessed. Lillian’s guardian angels were working overtime! I really missed Josh when we got to the hospital. It was just Lillian and I in an E.R. room for a while before he got there. I was getting to text my mom though. I had called my dad and mom right after I got off the phone with 911 at home and asked them to pray for us and told them what was going on. They were just as horrified and sickened and terrified as we were. You never think such a thing could happen to you, to your family. Luckily it DIDN’T happen to us. But it came awful close. Too close. It is so horrifying to think if we hadn’t had that monitor………we would have slept through our daughter slipping away from us. We’ll never get over that.
The doctors saw nothing wrong with her, and she was fully oxygenated, so they sent us home. I think we were shell-shocked all day Sunday. We didn’t go to bed that night. We just couldn’t stomach the thought of putting her down to sleep and going to sleep ourselves. It just came too close! Josh and I are currently taking shifts of one watching her while the other sleeps for short amounts of time. We know we can’t sustain this forever though and that eventually we’ll have to put our trust back in the Snuza (and in God!). After all, it did work…it did alert us that she wasn’t breathing. But we feel that she was already so far gone at that point. We hope and pray to never ever have another experience like that one!
All this week she’s been seen by the doctor, and having blood tests and x-rays. Thank God they found nothing wrong! I guess it will just be one of those awful mysteries and we don’t and will never know what caused our precious baby daughter to be Near-SIDS. It seems unreal to me now that I saw my beloved daughter laying so still like a little doll with her eyes open and unresponsive. It really made me feel I was experiencing the worst. The worst a parent can ever imagine. Thank God we were spared that reality. Our daughter is here, and she is sleeping on my lap right now, and she is fine and healthy. Thank you God!